This small box protects Loire town halls from cyberattacks

A start-up from Saint-Etienne has developed a protection box against cyberattacks and has equipped around a hundred volunteer municipalities in the Loire with it.

Cyberattacks continue to rain down on France. The intrusion of ENTs from Ile-de-France high schools as well as the attack on several ministries and France Travail only serve to alert us to the cybercriminal threats looming over France. Prevention rather than cure, this could be the motto of this start-up which enabled the municipality of Sury-le-Comtal to thwart a cyberattack at the beginning of March 2024.

Thanks to a small box connected to the town hall server, the theft of sensitive documents and data was avoided. A total of more than 460,000 cyberattacks have been foiled since the implementation of this system in the Loire department.

A protective shield and real-time analysis of intrusion attempts

The technology implemented in the voluntary town halls of the Loire is not only an additional barrier, it is also a real innovation. These boxes, designed by the Saint-Etienne start-up Serenicity, act as protective filters, detecting and blocking intrusion attempts into municipal networks.

Indeed, local and territorial authorities have a big Achilles heel: messaging and telephone networks, which are the preferred entry point for cyberhackers. “ When you work in IT, you tend to be a little paranoid. Some elected officials would tell us that we are doing too much, but we must face the facts: no one is safe from a cyberattack. Having more protection is better than having none at all », declares, cautiously, Jérôme Bonneville, the IT specialist at the town hall of Sury-le-Comtal.

These boxes also provide real-time analysis of detected cyberattacks, a sort of “cyberweather” which allows local authorities to better understand the threats weighing on their digital infrastructures.

“ Full sun is when there have been no attacks since midnight. A little rain means there were a few intercepted attacks, and tornadoes mean there were a few more », Explains Fabrice Koszyk, general manager of Serenicity, lamenting that periods of full sun tend to disappear.

A system integrated into the cybercrime observatory of the Loire Departmental Council

92 municipalities were thus able to join the system set up by the Loire Departmental Council. Called CD42, this project aims to support municipalities in their digital transformation by offering “ innovative solutions in cybersecurity, digital sobriety and the development of connected and sustainable territories “. The start-up behind this protective case is one of them.

At the time of writing, no less than 463,058 cyberattacks have been blocked by this system. This protection is all the more necessary as the data stored on local authority servers is often confidential and potentially dangerous once made available to cyberhackers. They may be subject to ransomware or identity theft.

“ You can be attacked and not know it. We can have a civil status leak where there are all the birth certificates and ignore that this data will be resold on the darknet », Specifies Séverine Reynaud, vice-president of the Loire department, in charge of Digital. It emphasizes the duty to protect this sensitive data, with the aim of protecting citizens from the violation of their personal data.

Sources: Franceinfo, Loire Department, Serenicity